Seiryū
by dktsubani
Summary: Reincarnation is not always a blessing. A butterfly beats its wings, and a hurricane forms halfway around the world. SI OC, fluid format.
1. I - X

_Life is movement. What is, was, will be. Ever-moving, ever-changing—yet ever-constant._

_Death is much the same._

**I.**

Yamamoto Keiko has always been a curious child. She hadn't cried unnecessarily, she hadn't been spiteful as some infants were. She hadn't even been jealous of a younger sibling, instead taking Takeshi under her wing without a further word. Yes, she's always been curious, but not outright odd.

Except that sometimes, she _is._ Sometimes, Tsuyoshi gets the feeling that his daughter is… different.

(Because even little infant Takeshi had sensed something was wrong, and cried for his mother, that night. Keiko hadn't.)

People talk, sometimes. _Poor Yamamoto-san, bringing up two children alone. At least Keiko-chan and Takeshi-chan are well-behaved. A bit surprising, really, from children whose father is a—_

Tsuyoshi just sometimes feels like taking down his sword where it's been hung on the wall – _I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry,_ empty words murmured to an empty shell – and filleting them like fish, like raw meat, like he does so easily with a knife.

But he can't, because he's given up on that life and has cut all ties with it, and now he's just Yamamoto Tsuyoshi, chef and owner of Takesushi. Just the man that runs a sushi shop, and maybe once he'd been glad of that fact. To no longer have his hands drip with years and years of blood, and hang that stained reputation up for the smiles of his children and long-gone wife.

It was worth it, yes, completely, and if given the choice he will do it again, _always_, but still—

Still, he hears, and sees, and worries.

**II.**

Yamamoto Keiko may have always been a curious little child, always questioning of the world in ways that are sometimes _frightening_, but that's nothing new. That's nothing worrisome. She lets the comments roll right over her, moving on with her day of _reading_ and _writing_ and _learning again._

Because this isn't her first time living, although it is her first life in this one, as far as she can recall. She knows the one with the name _Yamamoto Takeshi_ will be important. Oh, _so important_, in the future.

But now, he's just her brother, just her little otouto, the one who will need a _normal_ sister.

She's tried, of course. If only for the sake of her father's odd little frown that quickly quirks into a smile when he catches her looking. If only for the sake of her little brother, she's tried to be normal, act normal, as if nothing were wrong.

Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn't. But she'll try, none the less, for Takeshi and Tsuyoshi. For her new family.

(Eeven though _she's not supposed to be here, what is she doing here, I don't _belong _I'm not _supposed to exist, _I_ died—)

It's just a matter of whether or not it'll be enough.

(She hopes, prays, that it will be.)

**III.**

Living with the Yamamotos is sort of like living with an enormous amount of sunlight, blinding the unprepared with cheeriness and its absurd amount of _normality_.

"Hey, nee-chan, can you help me practice baseball? I wanna try out for the school team next month!"

She ruffles his hair, still in the lighter, fluffy stages of childhood. "Only if you finished your homework and if tou-san lets us go to the park."

Her brother nods vigorously, and after he shows her his completed homework he stares with his wide black eyes toward their father. The man melts, just a bit. It's not that obvious, but his children can tell. "Be back before dinner."

"Yeah, yeah, thanks tou-chan!" Her Takeshi-kun practically drags her out the door. She finds she doesn't mind; not really.

He reminds her of the sibling she'd had before (_push down the hurt, see, it's easy, just don't think about it_), and her affection and protective nature for this one is no different.

If it means suffering through ball-throwing practice and the shrieks of the children at the park, then so be it. It's good hand-eye coordination, anyway, and her brother certainly likes it better than the other activities that their father had suggested.

The fact of being far more skilled in _understanding_ the nature of things than most would believe aside, Takeshi surprisingly takes well to the traditional good versus evil games, and for that, Keiko is grateful. He laughs easily, puts others at ease with his friendly nature, even at such a young age. It only helps that Takeshi is _genuine_—one of the few that she has ever encountered in either of her lives who mean what they say, and say what they mean.

It is an incredible blessing to be so, even if it means that her brother is more naïve, slow to understand the reality of things than most. But this is her brother.

She will _fight_ for his right to remain a _child_, to have a _childhood_, even while the other mothers at the park look on with pity when they think she isn't looking.

**IV.**

Takeshi is not stupid. He might be young, but he's not _unintelligent._

He _knows_ the other adults give him, can _see_ them out of the corner of his eyes, no matter how much nee-chan tries to block them. He knows that having just the one parent and no other relatives is not normal. He knows that such a thing is rare in peaceful Namimori. He has never seen aunts, or uncles, or cousins, or anything else other than his sister and his father. He has never _had_ them.

But he doesn't mind.

It's hard to put it into words, really. _He's_ the one who feels them, and still, he has trouble. But when he explains to most adults that he doesn't mind having only a father and a sister, because they are his world and they are enough and they _should_ be enough, no matter what the other people say. There's not many that understand that, and if they do, they're scattered few and far between.

(But sometimes he gets the feeling that someone, somewhere, is watching him from the sidelines as if they _know_ what he's feeling, and he turns around and sees no one but a brown-haired boy and that's strange, isn't it, because what would Dame-Tsuna know about fending off people and their unwanted questions?)

**V.**

She doesn't have that many friends, to be honest. Not like most others in her class, who have entire _connections_ based on their year, lower year, and upper year acquaintances. A combination of being the book-loving first daughter of the local sushi chef and one of the higher-ranked students in class (_but never like last time, not the elite upper ranks, no, _don't draw attention to yourself) has created a… bubble, of sorts, around her. She does have the occasional lab partner or study-mate, of course, but it's not the same.

Being assigned to work together, or working for the same education-related goal, is not the same as spending time with someone simply because it is something enjoyable.

On the other hand, Takeshi has _hoards._ Even at his young age he's incredibly skilled at baseball; at playground games he is always the first one to be picked, or the second, if the playing teams have mixed years of children. He is a part of the school baseball team. He is part of almost every single game that he is sucked into whenever they visit a park.

He is a part of a _community_, and even if she is allowed to drop in on those as an "elder sibling," she never exchanges more than a few words with the other older kids.

She'd _tried,_ though. She honestly had. Keiko never likes making her family worry, but her father certainly has, and had fretted after her to spend some time with the other girls, the ones who have a contact list on their phone a mile long. Even Takeshi, with that keen mind unusual for a ten-year-old, has asked why she spent so much time at home.

(He'd simply shrugged when she'd asked why he was worried about something like that, gave her that smile that said _'silly nee-chan,'_ and pressed her for answers.)

The only notable 'friends' she has to speak of are Matsuoka Satomi and Takei Eri, and that's enough for her, regardless of what anyone else thinks.

It _is._

**VI.**

Their first meeting had been an accident, and a cliché, if Keiko is to be honest—not enough seats in the elementary school cafeteria, and the three of them had been herded to the same table for lunch one summer day. She still remembers the sunlight streaming through the window and highlighting Satomi's dark brown hair, turning it completely black in the harsh lighting, like hers and Eri's, and the glint of the silver-framed glasses reflected onto the table. Satomi-chan and Eri-chan, back then.

That is another thing that is _different_; Japanese suffixes. Tricky little things, if one weren't born and raised in Japan with its Japanese mindset and its own Japanese culture and propriety and manners. Keiko makes do.

They'd been ten years old, all of them—birthdays only a month each apart, with Keiko the oldest and Satomi the youngest and Eri hovering in the middle. But that hadn't mattered. It had taken repeated glimpses of each other, and an increasing familiarity only helped along by the table near the wall with the always-open window somehow becoming 'their' table and seeing each other in class, day in, day out, but eventually, that _hadn't mattered_.

Their meeting might have been a cliché, but that friendship has lasted two years. Keiko tells her two friends things that she doesn't dare tell her father or brother, and Satomi and Eri return the favor as the youngest of three and an only child.

It's… surprisingly normal, around them, and she likes that. It gives her a place (_purpose_) and friends.

It makes her decision easier, in the long run. Perhaps Takeshi won't understand, or perhaps he will—he always has been perceptive of the things that matter, and to him, his _nee-chan_ does. Whether or not he'll understand the consequences is another thing.

**VII.**

The ceiling is dark, shadows superimposed on the white paint. The wooden floor is cool beneath her back, even beneath the blankets that attempt to buffer the cold. She can hear two lungs slowly breathing in, out, around her, in the grip of well-deserved sleep.

"_What do you want to do when you grow up, Eri-chan?" Knee-length skirt swirling around her legs, Satomi's brown hair glints dark in the noon light as she swings herself around one of the playground's swing set support poles. Around and around and around._

_The addressed girl hums in thought, tilting her head back to meet the back of the bench where she sits next to Keiko. "I haven't given it too much thought, really."_

"_Who does?" Satomi giggles, but her face turns serious just as quickly as it had been amused. She does that sometimes, but it never fails to amaze Keiko how rapidly her friend can change topics. "But still. If you could do anything in the world, what would you do?"_

_True to form, the only girl in their group with glasses has an answer ready in few minutes. "I'd probably become a lawyer, like my kaa-san. I want to help the people who need it, but can't afford it. What about you, Satomi? What would you be?"_

_It's like Satomi has been waiting for the question, and maybe she has. "I'd like to be a teacher, or maybe a painter! I like colors and making things with paints, but I like to help people too, like you said, Eri-chan! Just in a different way, I suppose." She smiles, and turns to Keiko._

"_What about you, Keiko-chan? What would you want to be?"_

The same question haunts her as a twelve-year-old, the same as it had a year ago. Her friends are perceptive; perhaps odd for their age, but they are the youngest of the family with two older siblings to show the way, an only child with more opportunities than most, and the oldest that is far older than she seems. It makes sense to Keiko, and if the other two notice, they don't remark.

(If the neighbors, the adults, the community remarks, then that is their problem, not Keiko, nor her friends'. She will _keep_ it that way.)

_What would she want to be?_ She knows, vaguely, what Takeshi's future will entail. She has already made her decision, long ago, to not partake in it.

The shadows shift, and Keiko makes her choice.

**VIII.**

"Are you sure?" Satomi asks again, voice anxious and gaze unsure. She is wringing her hands. Her drink lies untouched on the café table, long abandoned for the conversation.

"I am." Keiko is touched by this, she really is. But her friends are not making her decision any easier.

Eri is the one to speak next, ever the logical one. She so often is, in their little group. "Think about it, Keiko. _Really_ think about it. It's not that we don't want you to attend Midori; it's that we don't want you to think you have to because of _us._ I know that you wanted to go to Namimori to at least keep an eye on Takeshi-kun somewhat." The fact that the glasses-adorned girl even dropped the suffix '-chan' speaks volumes to her, and Keiko blinks in surprise.

Because yes, that is true, and what has she done to deserve friends like this? Keiko isn't exactly sure. "I know. I do understand. And I did want to keep an eye on my brother, but I think he'll do better without the middle school teachers constantly comparing me to him. Kami-sama knows he had a problem with that all throughout the last year; it's not his fault that choosing sports over studying is something the rest of Namimori doesn't understand."

Even if it means that she won't be able to watch over him in Namimori Middle, she thinks it's a worthy price to pay for Takeshi's freedom from her shadow. From Satomi's easing of the tension in her shoulders and Eri's sigh, they see it too.

"Alright. If you're _sure_ you're sure." Satomi finally takes a sip from her lemonade, and Eri does the same with her iced tea. Keiko smiles.

It's nice to have friends that understand, sometimes.

**IX.**

The swords in the _dojo_ at the back of the shop have always been there—old relics from days long past, with only the plainest (_the most useful_) hung up near the back wall of the sushi shop as a decoration. Keiko has passed it day in, day out, up and down the stairs for the most of her life.

Its disappearance on her birthday, once so ever-present, takes her by surprise.

Confused, but mostly sure that her father had taken it down for oiling or sharpening or cleaning or something of the sort, she continues up to her room above the shop, steps thudding into an empty home because she's back from school early and Takeshi is at baseball practice and her father had hollered at her and her brother in the morning that he'd be out for a bit when she got back home, he was getting some shopping done.

For what, she doesn't know, but her question is answered by the time that she has finished her math homework and about halfway through her science. Satomi and Eri will be over later, and she needs to finish now in order to have any time for them. "Keiko!" Her father shouts from downstairs, the bell on the door punctuating his call.

When she arrives, he is holding a sheathed blade in his hand, faint sketches of a bamboo tree adorning the otherwise black cover, and _she knows that image._

"I know that we'll be having your friends over and cake and opening presents and all that later," he starts in one long breath, black eyes firmly on her. She can't stop staring at the sword, thoughts churning. "But you're turning twelve, and I'd like you to start learning how to stay safe."

_I'd like you to learn how to defend yourself,_ is what he doesn't say, and the words between the lines snaps her out of her daze and sets her attention on him.

His eyes are dark. _Had this happened in—in actuality, before she'd been born and altered it?_

Keiko doesn't know what to think.

**X.**

Takeshi's reaction is, in retrospect, something she should have predicted.

"I think you should," he says, eyes wide but resolute. Even in Primary, he knows what she is doing, asking him, and he responds in that innocent, guileless way of his that makes her heart ache. "It's a good idea – why are you so against it, nee-chan?"

She can't answer that question, not without saying things like _It was supposed to be yours, not mine_, and _if I take it, what will you have?_ without sounding either ungrateful or odd.

And she _is _grateful, and even if this is Takeshi, her own brother, she doesn't want to worry him by being _odd._

Effectively, even without knowing it, Takeshi has her cornered.

(Or maybe even by knowing it, on some level – his eyes, as much as they are the windows to his thoughts and soul, are triumphant when she finally sighs and gives in.)

Keiko can only hope that even with this new oddity – _you _caused_ this by being born, you're changing _everything, _this is not _right – this will… not come to pass, no, not the way that the story goes in her head. But perhaps in a way that will leave Takeshi as unhurt as possible.

Tou-san has never said that she needs to learn the _Shigure Soen Ryu_ style, after all.

* * *

><p>Testing the waters. Let me know what you think.<p>

On another note, I am working on **Wait for Dawn.** Its plot is just coming along slowly, due to some real life issues. **Seiryū** should come along at a faster pace, since I know where I'm going with this story.**  
><strong>

Safe travels,

- dktsubani


	2. XI - XX

**XI.**

"Lift your arm a little higher, like that, yes. Now strike."

She doesn't really know why she's doing this.

"Now step back, middle position, then jab."

After all, kenjutsu is Takeshi's niche. Or rather, _will _be his niche, once he truly gets into the _"mafia game_," and not the little play-acting that he's doing right now, trying to copy his _nee-chan_. Is it truly right of her to take it from him like this?

But then again, she knows how the majority of women are treated here, and she is not a wallflower, or a princess to be rescued, or _anything_ of the kind, and she _will not be one._

The fact that her father had been the first to offer it and that her brother had accepted it, though, warms something in her heart.

(Maybe she _is_ meant to be here, after all.

She pushes the thought back and concentrates instead.)

"Spin, slash, then raise the blade to block."

And that by the time that Takeshi _really_ takes kenjutsu seriously enough that he'll need training, she'll be good enough to provide it is simply another reason why she wants – _needs – _to learn.

"Good. And that's kata number four."

Keiko lowers the sword from the blocking position she'd held it in, protecting her head, with a sigh and throbbing shoulders. It'll ache the morning after, she knows, at the very least until lunch. "You weren't kidding when you said this one was more difficult on the shoulders, tou-san."

"Of course; did you really think I'd lie about something like that?" His mouth is smiling, but his eyes are dark. He had been supportive of her choosing to learn this style, she knows, but there is still… _something_ about the man that's her father that disapproves. Still, she doesn't regret her choice. She _can't._

"No, but I won't be appreciating the soreness in the morning."

Tsuyoshi laughs from his leaning position at the dojo wall, barefooted and merrily. One wouldn't think that he'd done this same form that she'd just performed mere moments ago as a demonstration, much faster and more precisely than she could hope to think of copying right now, and had wandered off to let her try. "Then I'll just have to make you that drink that you like in the morning to make up for it."

"Didn't Takeshi finish the milk yesterday?" Keiko turns back to the far side wall and begins the new kata again, this time paying attention to her footwork.

Her tou-san rubs his chin thoughtfully. "Did he? I don't exactly remember."

He laughs again, a mere chuckle this time, at the glare she sends him over the bamboo wood of her blade.

(It is not… _that_ blade, she knows. She is not learning the _Shigure Soen Ryu,_ which would make the blade useless to her, anyway. No, she's using one of her father's old practice swords instead, and she's perfectly content with that.

_The weapon does not make the warrior._)

**XII.**

Her father may ask and her brother may wonder, but Keiko knows she will not change her mind. She's tried to explain to Satomi and Eri when they'd asked, eyes curious and searching for explanation. She tells them what she'd told her tou-san and Takeshi-kun, that as much as the _Shigure Soen Ryu _would be a good style to learn, it is not one that she feels a connection with.

Her friends and Takeshi had had a hard time understanding what she'd meant, but her tou-san had known. And it is true – the versatility of the style might have been something truly… _interesting,_ if she had chosen to pursue it, but as a person and a now-kenjutsu student, Keiko prefers continually flowing movements to the _Shigure Soen Ryu_'s comparably more rigid methods and sharp ones.

But that, as true as it is, is the reason that she has given her friends and her brother and her father as an explanation.

Her more genuine reason for learning the style that she'd chosen is threefold. First, to give Takeshi something of his own when their world turns upside-down and he takes the art of the sword more seriously, and, later, builds his identity around it; second, to give him another style of fighting to hone his skills on, because as much as the _Shigure Soen Ryu_ is proclaimed as the invincible style, being too set in its ways will only hinder Takeshi's growth as a swordsman.

And third, because everyone expects her to, as the first-born daughter of a wielder of the style.

In her efforts to remain firmly out of the mafia and live a _quiet_ life (so that she will change the least things) so that Takeshi will at least have the life that she _knows_ will turn out for the best in the end, Keiko knows the advantages of having an ace up her sleeve and surprise on her side.

**XIII.**

"Well. This is it."

And it is. Today is the day that, with Eri and Satomi, Keiko will start Secondary School. After this, it will be difficult to justify a transfer to Namimori. In all respects, it is her last chance to change her mind, to decide to attend Namimori Middle instead and protect her brother as best as she can there.

But she's made her choice already, and Keiko knows that she is a stubborn enough person to stand by it.

Setting things up for this had been easy. Explaining things to tou-san had been what Keiko had been worried about, but now, she knows that she had had no reason to.

"_I want the best for you,"_ he'd said, and she believes him.

(It explains a lot of things, from the offer of the _Shigure Soen Ryu_ in the first place to his accommodation of her choice of another style, to the very fact that he has offered an art that brings so much _pain_ to him in the first place. It is a bittersweet reminder of how much this life's father loves her, and Keiko intends to treasure it with all of the carefulness it deserves.)

So. Here they are, at the edge of something new, and she sweeps her gaze around the outside gates, taking in the formality and the ruthlessly knowledge-seeking atmosphere of the school.

For all of her previous attempts at _hiding among the other students_ in terms of schoolwork, this, she knows, is a place that she can _thrive_ in, regardless of her other, more personal reasons for choosing to attend Midori.

"Last chance to turn back," Eri says, and Keiko laughs and gives her friend a jab of an elbow to her ribs. The girl doesn't even flinch, long used to her methods, and leans slightly out of the way to take the blow on the smallest area possible instead.

"Not taking it," Keiko answers, and Satomi links both of their arms together with hers.

Together, the three of them walk through the doors of Midori Secondary School, one of the most prestigious secondary schools available near the town of Namimori, Japan.

_No turning back._

**XIV.**

His decision to teach his little Keiko-chan the way of the sword had not been an easy one. Even with the dojo in the back (_to keep his skills sharp, in case he ever needs them_) and the swords on the back wall, Tsuyoshi has left his past and all that it entails behind for a _reason._

His wife had died for that reason. And as much as it pains him for it to be _necessary_ that he teach a twelve-year-old daughter how to defend herself, he will not let _his children_ die for it as well.

Takeshi-kun has tried his hand at the sword, but had gone back to baseball – not that Tsuyoshi had really expected anything else. His boy is _gifted_ with the wooden bat, and though he worries and frets after him like he does with Keiko he isn't that concerned.

A wooden bat works just as well as a sword when under duress or in a fight.

His Keiko-chan, on the other hand – it confuses him, sometimes, why she would throw herself into perfecting kenjutsu when she could have learned just hand-to-hand instead, and simply concentrate on her studies. Not that she isn't learning barehanded combat; it is just that with the gifting of one of his old swords, he _knows_ that his Keiko has less time for other, more _leisurely _things now.

(She always carves out enough time for her family and friends, however, and for that Tsuyoshi is grateful, in the midst of a community of parents who are left behind by their children in pursuit of academics or goals.)

Still, he worries after her decision of leaving the _Shigure Soen Ryu_ for another style. Part of it is personal, since _Shower in Late Autumn, Blue Swallow Style_ is what he uses, and he _knows_ it to work, and work well. And he _is _proud of his daughter for the decision, because he knows, also, the damage that can occur if a swordsman uses a style that is not attuned with him.

But another, larger part of it is pure _worry_.

The style that his Keiko-chan had chosen is deadly, true, but it is also one of the most difficult to put into practice.

(His daughter has always loved a challenge.)

**XV.**

Midori Secondary is a highly competitive school, if she is to be completely honest, as well as being an all-girl one. Keiko finds that she doesn't mind, because finding love in her Secondary years has never been one of her goals, anyway.

But her classmates' complaints on the lack of boys grates on her nerves, and Keiko resists a sigh even as Satomi pats her shoulder with a smile and Eri ignores them all in favor of her book.

Sometimes, Keiko wonders exactly _how_ the other students in their entering class had ever managed acceptance into the school. She knows that Midori only takes students within a certain percentage at the top of the class in grades in the Primary schools, and Keiko had given up on seeming absolutely _normal_ in the academics aspect and had shifted others out of her way to graduate at the upper ranks of their class.

It is... oddly reminiscent of her past life, though, with girls gossiping and exchanging study tips at the same time. There are similarities enough to tear claws at her heart, even after – years.

It has been _years_ since she has woken up and embraced the name Keiko with all of the things that comes with it. She's not sure if she should be mortified at the time that has passed, or grateful that she has been able to move on with her new life, not enshrouded in grief as she knows many others would have done.

(As many others – _one_ other, she corrects herself, because hopefully it will forever be _just the one_ – _had _done, at the loss of the only life she'd ever known.)

Keiko blinks when Eri snaps her fingers in front of her eyes. "Class is starting," she simply says, and moves back to her own desk with her empty lunch bag.

Her friends are long used to the moments when she falls into her own head and need assistance refocusing. She's not quite sure when it started, but since then Eri has noticed every incident in her presence, and Satomi has done what she could when their other friend isn't there to do so. Keiko does what she can for her friends when she can in return.

It might not be the flower-giving and clothes-sharing relationship that others have, but Keiko is thankful for it anyway, and she thinks that her friends are, too.

**XVI.**

"Do you know where Yamamoto-chan is?"

"How am _I _supposed to know? I don't even know her phone number, for kami-sama's sake."

Hitomi side-eyes her friend, who is sitting and typing away at her phone. Kana hasn't even looked up from her mobile writing of the essay due in three days, after the weekend. "Does she even _have_ a phone?"

Kana shrugs, and doesn't reply. Hitomi, herself, sighs and leans back onto her elbows from where she's sitting on the bench next to her friend, both of them waiting for the bus to take them home to Agemachu.

"Well. The least she could do is _tell_ us if she's walking home, so we know not to wait for her."

"You know Yamamoto-chan. The only people she _really_ talks to is Satomi-chan and Eri-chan."

"And isn't that weird?" Hitomi glances again at the girl sitting next to her. She still hasn't moved, nor have her fingers slowed down in their furious tapping against the touch screen. "You'd think she'd talk to more people, being the daughter of a sushi shop owner and all."

"Why did you want to talk to her, anyway?" Kana doesn't look up, but Hitomi sighs and laces her fingers together, rubbing at the tense spots at the joints. They'd written a lot of notes today, in preparation for the quiz at the start of the next week.

"I wanted to invite her to go shopping with us at the Namimori Center this weekend. Guess I won't be able to, then."

Kana doesn't say anything, and Hitomi leans back to look at the sky instead.

**XVII.**

"Are you sure about this?"

Keiko nods firmly, and Eri sighs and pushes her glasses back up her nose from where they'd slid down. Satomi is… _bouncing,_ on the balls of her feet, and laughs at her friend's hesitation.

"Come on, Eri-chan! It'll be interesting, at the very least!"

The object in question is the science lab, the experiment conducted in Satomi's backyard, where they will have her brothers' aid, should anything go wrong. It involves baking soda, vinegar, and a lot of plastic bottles made to look like rockets.

Eri sighs again and gives in.

(Keiko thinks that maybe, this is what it feels like to be _normal_ and not have to worry about a future written only in her head and her father's dark past and her brother's… _difficulties_ with the majority of the town.

Because whatever he has with his… _friends_ at baseball will _not_ be healthy in the future, in _any_ sense of the word, but Keiko doesn't think she can do anything to stop it at this point, and that, in and of itself, is a failure.

_Keiko doesn't accept failures._)

(Satomi notices her… _sulking,_ and aims a chemically-fired plastic bottle rocket model at _her_ and not Eri instead.)

**XVIII.**

Namimori, Japan. A small town situated in a lesser-known area of the country, and a place where everyone knows everyone. Any piece of gossip shared between two overeager mothers is sure to have reached the ears of the woman who owns the tea shop furthest from the town square in a matter of days.

It is small, defensible, and is currently under the protection of the Hibari family.

It is, in effect, the perfect place for a former (not "retired," because one never _retires_ from the _mafia_) swordsman to hide and start a new life in.

(They had waited three years the first time around, and again for ten years after the _oh-so-tragic death_ of his wife.

They will finish the job, this time, and they will make it _permanent._)

**XIX.**

Takeshi knows who his tou-chan had been before retiring to become a sushi chef; the swords on the back wall and the dojo make it hard for him to doubt it. And it's not that he does, because he sees his nee-chan practicing every day when he returns home, and he'd have to be blind _and_ deaf to not notice _that_.

But sometimes, it's hard equating the man that has been his tou-chan all his life, making his sushi and laughing with genuine amusement when Takeshi says something to make him laugh, and the man that spars with his nee-chan, his wooden sparring sword moving through the air so quickly it's only a blur. There's an edge of something else to it, then, when he's teaching an art he's hanged up in order to teach his only daughter how to defend herself.

It is… startling, to see. His kind, freely-laughing tou-chan holing up and his eyes going _blank_ is something that Takeshi thinks he will never get used to.

(And he hopes to kami-sama that he will never have to.)

He drops his thread of thought, though, and tucks it away for _later, _when Togai-kun asks him if he'll be coming to the summer baseball camp held at the school one town over. "Of course!" he tells his teammate, and lets thoughts of baseball and strategy and technique fill his head.

**XX.**

Days pass.

Keiko gets better at her chosen sword style, and takes Takeshi to and from his Primary school before she goes onto her own Midori Middle. It's relatively quiet, and peaceful, as the regular customers return to Takesushi whenever they can, for the food, for the drink, for a chance of a quiet moment and a dish of sake before returning to work, and their patronage keeps their little family's head above water.

The seasons change, first term ending with the beginning of summer and releasing its hold on students for the warmer months. Keiko takes the time to visit the park with her brother again – he's now focusing on baseball more than anything else, although the combined efforts of both her and tou-san are able to keep his education somewhat up-to-date. She's not sure if she should be surprised or not.

When she arrives at Takesushi's doors she's surprised at not having to unlock them with her key. Usually her father keeps them locked on Sunday, which today is, and he would have made sure that the door had been locked, since Takeshi is gone on his camp.

She's locking the door behind herself again when she _senses_ it, over half a year of her father coming at her with _intent_ at random parts of the day on the weekends with his wooden sparring sword honing a sense for situational awareness that is now _screaming_ at her.

Keiko ducks a thrown knife to the head in time to roll under one of the tables by the walls. It thuds into the support behind with a dull _thud_ that she can hear, even from where she is crouching.

_Well. This is quite the homecoming._

"You're one of Yamamoto's brats, aren't you? Don't answer that, I know the answer."

Her practice sword is in the dojo in the back, and from what she can tell from the trajectory of the knife, her assailant is in the left part of the store, and further in. The way that Takesushi is laid out, she will pass directly by him on the way to the dojo. Exiting through the doors to take the back way is not an option, since that would mean leaving her cover, meager as it is.

"No hard feelings then, I hope. The sins of the father are paid for by the blood of the child; you understand, _sì_?"

Her wooden, _safe_ practice sword might be in the back, but there are still swords on the back wall, hanging on supports. She _knows_ that if she runs, and uses Takesushi's furniture to her advantage, she can reach them.

Maybe with a few holes in her clothing, or knives in her limbs, or… well, she might not be able to outrun a professional in the mafia (because _who else could it be_) but she can at the very least _try._

Keiko sighs, mentally apologizes to her father about the damage that is about to occur, and makes a run for it.

* * *

><p>Some more things have happened. Let me know what you think.<p>

Also, as I would like to know: what is your opinion on Satomi and Eri? How do they appear to you, the reader?

Safe travels,

- dktsubani


	3. XXI - XXX

**XXI.**

The world is fuzzy, and bright. She struggles to think.

Keiko doesn't exactly remember what had happened after she had almost managed to reach the back wall, albeit with knife wounds and her head slammed against the floor. That none of the blades had hit home in a fatal spot says something truly remarkable about her father's training methods, though it hadn't been enough, in the end.

Or it simply means that the assassin has been _playing_ with her, before he kills her. She isn't quite sure which of the two it is at the moment.

But she knows that there is a knife in her leg. She knows, because it hurts, a pain with sharp teeth that _bites_. Keiko looks down at what she can see of it from where she lies – _it shines in what light there is_ – and wishes she hadn't moved her head when pain lances across her skull.

There is blood beneath her, warm and sticky, and she breathes deeply, resisting the urge to cough and wheeze. Her ribs are bruised; that, she is also sure of. They have always worked with wooden weapons, wooden swords capable of hitting and bruising. Never metal ones. Never ones sharp enough to injure harshly and to make her bleed, because as determined as her father is, he has refrained from using live steel in their spars for her own safety.

(_Because she is too weak. Not ready yet. Not _good enough_ yet._)

How can she think of protecting her brother when she cannot even protect _herself_?

Her original intentions had been to stay out of the mafia, as her tou-san does. To be a safe haven for Takeshi instead, because she knows that what is coming will be good for him, in the end. Through all of the trials. Through all of the mistakes, and the pain.

(…Perhaps she's been lying to herself the entire time. Perhaps she's been afraid of failing instead, and had chosen the coward's way out.)

But. Right here, right now, where everything that happens next hinges upon this moment –

…

She does not want to die.

The thought is crystal-clear in a world of fog. A resolution, a conviction – a truth.

_She does not want to die_ – not until she has seen Takeshi through the story in her head, and _live_.

(Not until she knows that she is leaving her only brother and her tou-san in good hands, and not alone in the world. Not until she knows that her Takeshi will not attempt to jump off a roof, torn by grief for a sport that he does not know is _not worth throwing away his life for at the first sign of defeat_.)

…

…When her father bursts through the unlocked door, it is to blue fire.

**XXII.**

Tsuyoshi has never been a particularly religious man.

He has never had a cause to; a belief in a god has never stopped anyone from dying. A belief in a god has never changed the fact that his more… _destructive skills_ are _necessary_.

(A belief in a god has never changed things, nor will they ever excuse the blood on his hands, however hard he tries to wash them away.)

_A belief in a god has never mattered._

Still, at this moment in time with his heart in his throat and his hands gone cold and a _fire_ building in his chest, he prays to a god he does not believe in.

_Kami, if you exist, let this not be._

Tsuyoshi had first noticed that something is _wrong_ when he had seen the scout keeping an eye on anyone that passes by Takesushi, no matter how hard the man had tried to hide in plain sight. That part of the assassination team had been taken care of with steady hands and an increasingly fraying worry.

…He almost loses the precarious grip he has managed to establish on his self-control when he sees his daughter on the ground, surrounded by Rain. That she has been pushed to igniting her Flames is a sign in and of itself.

…

_I've… failed._

The man _laughs_ at him, sharp and with an edge that cuts. He plays with a knife stained with blood – _Keiko's blood _– and gestures with it wildly. Red flicks to the ground and stains the wood dark, alight in a blue light that does not burn what it touches.

"Didn't think we'd come back, did you? Thought you'd _finished the job_ after the last time, and that we'd given up."

Tsuyoshi does not have his blade with him, being mounted on the wall as it currently is, but a sword is not the only iron-edge weapon that he knows how to use.

He works with knives for a living; it does not matter if it is as a chef now, or as _something else_ before.

"Though, the girl was also full of surprises. Like father, like daughter, I suppose. Shame that she doesn't seem to have any training – she might have _survived_ if she had."

The assassin smiles, all teeth. Just beyond him is his Keiko, wrapped in premature Flames that _should not have happened._

_He has failed to keep her from the mafia._

…Yamamoto Tsuyoshi, as patient of a man as he is normally, loses said patience.

**XXIII.**

They don't take Keiko to a hospital, because if they did they would also have to explain knife wounds, various bruises, and a concussion to the police, and it would be better to stay at home, as Takeshi is coming back from his summer camp soon.

(And if there is the added benefit that Tsuyoshi _knows_ who is in his neighborhood, and does not have to worry about any _more_ potential assassins disguised as staff or as patients, then he does not mention it to his daughter.)

Both he and his Keiko-chan are determined to act as if everything is normal – and it is. The body has been _dealt with_, in the several pieces that it had been in after Tsuyoshi had… _adequately expressed his displeasure,_ and any markings on the walls of Takesushi and on their furniture have been removed.

Tsuyoshi's skills are not limited to sushi, or _swordwork_. There is a reason that his restaurant has so many carved tables and chairs.

His daughter might have gained a concussion, but in his… _long life,_ Tsuyoshi knows how to deal with those. Though conventional sense might tell him, _scream_ at him to take her to a hospital because _there is nothing he can do_ if her condition takes a sharp turn towards the worst, he has had concussions and has _treated_ people with concussions for a long, _long_ time.

Sun Flames are not the only ones capable of healing, after a sense.

He has… attempted, to explain what the blue fire had been. But his daughter had interrupted him, and had given him a small, sad smile instead.

"_I'm not supposed to have it, am I? That's alright, tou-san, really. I'd… rather not in the first place, anyway."_

He respects her decision, but worries anyway.

_The same as he had with her choice in sword style. _

…But.

He had understood her choice then, and he understands her choice now.

So he smiles at his daughter and he smiles at his customers and he smiles at his son when he comes home in a blaze of laughter and (dark – he _knows_) eyes that gleam.

"Did anything interesting happen while I was gone?" is all he asks when he notices his nee-chan's bandages, and does not comment when she simply hums instead of answering.

**XXIV.**

Tsuyoshi might understand his daughter's choice to refrain from training with Flames, but that does not mean that he will leave her _defenseless._

He is… glad, that Keiko does not remark when he hands her the sparring sword she uses in a carrying sheath, and takes it anyway.

(With nary a word, with nary a smile – merely a grim tilt to her lips, and it turns something in Tsuyoshi's heart because this is _necessary._ Just as necessary as teaching her kenjustu in the first place.

He wishes it wasn't so.)

**XXV.**

Matsuoka Satomi might be the youngest of three children and used to being treated as a mere _afterthought_, but she has learned things in her time as such. She has learned how to speak if she wants something from her parents, from her brothers, from _people_; how to walk and behave, if she wants to go unnoticed; how to read body language, and react accordingly.

Keiko-chan and Eri-chan are probably the only people that she doesn't use her skills on regularly, other than her family and her meager connections with them; they are her friends, and she would really, _really _rather not. And by now, she likes to think she doesn't need to.

It doesn't change the fact that at first, she doesn't _understand_ it when Keiko starts bringing a sheathed sparring sword to school and places it in her locker for the day before carrying it back home, after the summer break. Day in and day out, no matter the fact that they walk home almost every day, and that she _knows_ the weight becomes tiresome on the days that they bring projects, or textbooks.

To be honest, the sudden behavior worries her, and she knows that it worries Eri, too.

She's tried asking her friend, of course, but Keiko-chan has been oddly defensive, deflecting questions or sometimes changing the subject entirely. It's only when she and Eri-chan corner their friend during lunch and bribe her with her favorite drink – lemon iced tea – that she sighs and answers.

"_A blade is useless if kept sheathed and apart from its user. There isn't a point to me learning kenjutsu if I don't have anything that even resembles a sword when I really need it."_

…And Satomi will admit that logic makes _some_ sort of sense.

But the fact that Keiko deems it _necessary_ to bring her _weapon_ and _safety blanket_ (because she knows what it is, she and Eri and Keiko had had a discussion on psychology and safety blankets, once, and she _recognizes one when she sees it_) to _school, _where it is supposed to be a _safe environment_ –

…That scares her beyond the initial worry more than anything else.

**XXVI.**

In hindsight, she should have expected this.

Keiko hadn't noticed him, at first. Black hair and black eyes are not rare in Namimori; her own Takeshi-kun and tou-san have the same coloring.

(Her mother had had brown hair and bright blue eyes instead – those sea-hued eyes are the ones that stand out in the photographs the most, as far as she can tell – explaining where she'd gotten her own blue eyes from, with the black hair from her tou-san.)

Looking back, Keiko now considers it a miracle that she hasn't actually _met_ Hibari Kyoya before, and has only heard of him and his patrols and the very beginnings of his _Namimori Disciplinary Committee_. But then again, he has never really bothered himself with the "herbivores" that keep to the rules.

Even then, she's been aware of him, somewhat – tales of his exploits, or rather, his _fights_ have been commented upon by the various customers that wander through Takesushi's doors, have been muttered about among her year-mates at school and along with their opinions on the wild-mannered boy.

But Keiko has to admit that Hibari Kyoya has only started to take an interest in _her,_ a student an entire two years above him and not even attending _the same Secondary school_, after there are words in Namimori of how she practices with a wooden sword in the dojo when Takesushi's doors are closed, and _especially_ after she starts bringing a sparring sword in a sheath around with her on her back.

Still, it does not mean that she is _too_ surprised when she is ambushed by the Disciplinary Committee Leader. Instead, she shifts the bag of groceries in one hand to better accommodate for the weight, and draws her sword in time to block both of his tonfa.

She has trained with her father after… _that incident,_ and her reaction time and speed in drawing the blade have increased in _spades._

"Ah, Hibari-san. Good morning. How are you today?"

He doesn't reply, though Keiko hadn't really expected him to. She sighs instead, slowly shifting the blade so that the majority of his force is near the pommel. People are watching, gaping; there is nothing that she can do about that, not anymore, but she _will_ be doing her best to _keep under the radar._

(Because the feeling of _danger_ and that someone is _watching her_ has never really left, not even after the deaths of the assassin and his team.)

Keiko smiles apologetically at her attacker. "I really am sorry, Hibari-san, but I have the groceries and my tou-san needs them for the shop. If you'll excuse me."

As much as she's trained with her father, as much as she's _older_ than him, she is not even _close_ to being a match for Hibari Kyouya – not in a straight-out spar or fight.

(_Not yet, but she _will _be, because there are dangerous people who are far, far stronger than him._

_She will _need_ to be._)

Keiko pushes him back and sheathes her blade because running with the sword in one hand and a bag of groceries in the other will be _dangerous _for bystanders_,_ and _runs for the hills_.

**XXVII.**

The rest of her days pass by like that – with chores and errands to run and homework to finish and projects to complete and _training and training and training._

(She doesn't mention her brief spats with Hibari Kyouya before she inevitably leaves to tou-san or Takeshi-kun, but she thinks they know, anyway. And it's rather hard to ignore the gossip amongst the town about the clashes between the two of them, what with almost everyone coming through Takesushi's doors either subtly or not-at-all subtly asking about the fights.

But tou-san and Takeshi never mention it, and for that, Keiko is grateful.)

Satomi and Eri ask questions about her new habit of bringing her blade with her and, later, about the rumors surrounding her and Hibari-san. They are satisfied with half-answers, though she _knows_ they know it is not the whole truth, and she is left to her studies and her training.

(And Hibari Kyouya, the stubborn, stubborn boy. Sometimes she wishes he would simply _calm down_ and have a cup of tea instead of defaulting to spar-fights, but she knows that will never happen – not until he stops snarling that she is not giving him a _proper_ fight, at least.)

Their father runs the shop. She studies, and trains. Takeshi keeps up with baseball practice, and makes it into the team that he's been aiming for and training for with the summer camp.

It is… a return to _normalcy, _or whatever that might be in her world that has started to slide sideways, and Keiko is grateful for it, immensely.

(She is grateful for the chance for things to settle down and let Takeshi _have a childhood,_ again.)

**XXVIII.**

Takeshi is… not having the most normal of days, at the moment.

If he is being honest, it had started with him noticing that one, small brown-haired boy staring at him and his nee-chan like all of the adults had been. But _his_ eyes had been different.

(_Like he _knows_ and _understands.)

He sees the boy again, and again, and again – and, as his _nee-chan_ would say, that is not surprising. They do go to the same Primary school, after all.

But the eyes never _change._

He would like to talk to the boy – he really would. It's just that with baseball practice and baseball training and team meets and competition meets and with his tou-chan and his nee-chan trying to cram _knowledge_ into his brain in-between, the boy sort of gets swept away along with the crowd that roars in his ears when he swings his bat.

Whenever he can spare a thought for the boy, he feels guilt at never _following through_ with his intentions. But then Eisen-san, the baseball team coach, brings the team together with a clap of his hands and a blow of his whistle for a meeting and Togai-kun whispers to him during it and Kuniaki-kun slings his arm around his shoulder –

…He's probably imagining things, anyway. Takeshi dives into the fervor of baseball and lets himself _forget._

**XXIX.**

If there is anything that Kikkawa Magohachi knows for a _fact,_ it is that Dame-Tsuna is both the most pathetic person he has ever met, and that the boy is the easiest to get lunch out of.

They have had an arrangement for the better part of the year, see. As much of a _failure_ as Dame-Tsuna is, his kaa-chan is mildly famous in Namimori Primary for her cooking.

It's a waste, giving them to someone like _Dame-Tsuna_. Magohachi doesn't mind… _giving that to someone who would appreciate it more._ Or at least, someone who doesn't trip on his own shoelaces and can actually walk on stairs without falling and not fail spectacularly at sports.

He knows that no one will try and stop him – some of his friends will even _help him,_ in return for some of the food.

But it's not the food that he wants today. It's the brat's _things,_ because there is nothing more hilarious to watch than seeing Dame-Tsuna stutter his way through an apology to Onoda-sensei, only to get shot down in front of the entire class.

That, too, is something that he knows that his friends will help him with.

**XXX.**

Namimori is a small town. Most everyone know each other through a friend-of-a-friend, at the very least, if they are not casual acquaintances themselves.

Still, it doesn't mean that Keiko recognizes the brown-haired boy on sight when viewed from the back. It doesn't matter, though – reluctant to draw attention to herself or not, a _beating_ and _thievery_ is not something that she can see, and simply walk away from.

(_Some would call it a weakness. But it keeps her human._

_And the fact is, there is always the thought of it-could-have-been-_Takeshi _in the back of her mind._)

Schoolyard bullies are easily scared away with a drawn sparring sword and _intention_ hidden in eyes. Though it might not work long-term, it is an acceptable immediate solution. Keiko sighs and puts the blade back where it belongs in its sheath and turns half-way around to where she'd put the boy at her back to protect him and –

…

…_She knows that boy._

She might not have been paying attention to the affairs of Namimori as closely as she should have been, perhaps, nor has she been refreshing her memory of _the story in her head_ in relevance to anyone _other_ than her Takeshi-kun. But she remembers him.

"A—ahh. T-thank y-you, stranger-s-san."

_Bearer of the Sky and the future Head of the Vongola Famiglia._

_Sawada Tsunayoshi. _

"A-ah? S-st-stranger-s-san? A-are y-you, um. Okay?"

* * *

><p>As always, let me know what you think.<p>

Questions for this time: would you rather see Takeshi and Keiko being friends/acquaintances of Tsuna's early on, or not? There are plans for each consequence, but I would like to hear your opinions before setting that in stone.

Safe travels,

- dktsubani


	4. XXXI - XL

**XXXI.**

He knows what the others say about him. Dame-Tsuna. Good-For-Nothing. Useless. At sports, at school, at _everything._

He can't even do anything when the other Primary school kids in class take his lunch. His teachers have given up on him.

(His mother, as much as he loves her, cannot seem to _understand._ He's long since given up trying to make her.)

In the end, it means that even when the bullies corner him in one of the small street backways that he normally takes to _avoid_ them, there is no one around to help, nor is he inclined to try and fight back.

"You know what we want, _Da-me-Tsu-na,"_ Kikkawa jeers, and Tsuna hangs onto the strap of his backpack with all the desperation that he feels running through his body at the moment. Today's homework is a large portion of his overall grade, and no doubt, Kikkawa and _his_ friends will take the papers that Onoda-sensei had given out.

As much as he's given up, he doesn't want to be singled out by the ill-tempered sensei_ again._

(But what choice does he have?)

He's in the middle of slowly shrugging his backpack strap from his shoulder when _she_ appears.

…

…_What._

At the moment, all he can see of her is the back of her head, her own schoolbag, and _is that a sword._ He's too trapped by fear to move, and it's only when Kikkawa and his gang backs away that he breathes out a breath he hadn't known he'd been holding.

When she turns around, he doesn't recognize her, but he bows anyway. Courtesy is the least thing that he can show to the person who's saved him, who'd _stood up to Kikkawa_.

(No one has ever done that for him before.)

"A—ahh. T-thank y-you, stranger-s-san."

Stranger-san isn't an adult, is the first thing that he notices. The second is that she seems to be in some state of shock, face pale and eyes… _startled,_ is the best word that comes to mind.

(_Maybe it's from saving _Dame-Tsuna,_ a voice in his mind sneers, and he pushes the thought down. Not now not now notnow_notnow.)

"A-ah? S-st-stranger-san? A-are y-you, um. Okay?"

His words seem to jolt her back into reality, at the very least, and she shakes her head briefly, up and down. Her eyes never leave his face, and Tsuna tries not to shuffle his feet or duck his head. He fails and, with his eyes to the ground, shifts his weight from foot to foot.

"I'm fine."

That's all she says before she looks away to where Kikkawa and his group had ran. He flails, for a moment – should he leave? Say something?

"…Does this happen often?"

Her voice cuts through his increasingly panicking thoughts, and Tsuna jerks his head up so quickly that he feels his neck complain at him. "A-ah. W-what… do you m-mean, st-stranger-san?"

She doesn't speak slowly, like some of the adults do sometimes, and he's grateful for that. She doesn't speak like he's a particularly dull child who can't understand sentences spoken in rapid-fire Japanese – because he _can._ It's just the _people_ that he has problems with. "I mean, do the other students… attempt to take your things often?"

He… doesn't really have an answer to that question. On the one hand, _yes_ is on the tip of his tongue, but on the other, stranger-san is the first person that he has met that does not start speaking or acting based on what she has heard about him.

(She is currently the first person to _ask_ instead of _assume,_ as close to the truth that they are all capable of coming to.)

"Ah…"

Stranger-san pauses. Her eyes aren't… _startled,_ anymore, but Tsuna can't put a word to the emotion, all the same. "…I'm thirsty. Care to come with me for a drink?" she asks, and gestures in the general direction of the town square.

…

…With more than a little nervousness and apprehension, Tsuna follows.

(It's only when they've sat down in the corner of a café that he realizes why she looks familiar – she is the sister of Yamamoto Takeshi, another student in his year group whose family only has the one parent and no other relatives, like his.)

**XXXII.**

This… will irreparably change things, Keiko knows.

Never has the story in her head mentioned anything about anyone stepping in on _Sawada's _side of the conflict, in his younger years. And until Gokudera Hayato and Sasagawa Ryohei and _her own Takeshi-kun_, she doesn't think anyone else _has_, either.

That does not matter now, though. Not with Sawada in front of her, refusing to touch the glass of lemonade that she'd placed in front of him, bought from the café; not with his eyes nervously flicking around the establishment, always darting away from the startled peoples' faces.

(Not with his eyes always, _always_ circling back to her, then to the lemonade, as if she is someone whose actions and motives he cannot _understand_.)

To have him at such a young age, and yet suspecting of so much – _what if it had been _Takeshi, is always at the forefront of her mind.

It is an illogical thought, but worries are not always logical. If Takeshi hadn't been as outgoing as he is; as easy-going as he is; as friendly as he is –

(_If he'd been _home_ that day, because he didn't have a nee-chan to leave his precious tou-chan at home with–_)

To be honest, she sees something of her brother in Sawada Tsunayoshi; but that is not the only reason that she has helped him.

It may have started as a simple as refusing to let anyone be mistreated while _she_ is _standing there,_ but that is not the reason that she will _continue_ to help him.

(Somewhere in her heart of hearts, she admits that resistance had been useless the moment she'd seen an _eight-year-old_ being bullied to Sawada's extent.)

"A-ah. Um. Stranger-san…" Sawada says, and Keiko turns her attention towards him. "Y-you… don't happen t-to know Y-yam-mamoto Takeshi-k-kun, do you?"

She does not react, she is _sure_ of that – _don't scare him don't scare him don'tscare_him – but the small brown-haired boy shrinks back into his seat, anyway, a small "_Hiee!" _dying in the back of his throat. He leaves the lemonade on the table _– hasn't touched it, hasn't even taken a _sip_, when has it been the last time he'd properly _rehydrated – and wrings his hands around and around in his lap.

Keiko has to turn over his words in her mind for a moment before she finds she can properly respond. "I do; I'm his nee-chan, actually – Yamamoto Keiko. How do you know Takeshi-kun, ah…"

Knowing peoples' names before they've introduced themselves is the quickest way to suspicion, even in small Namimori.

"I-I'm S-sawad-da T-tsunay-yoshi," he says quickly. His hands go around and around and around. _Only eight years old._

She tries to give him a reassuring smile, and at the very least, Sawada – no, _Sawada-kun _– stops wringing his hands and destroying his fingers. "Sawada-kun, then. I'm guessing you're in his Primary grade year?"

He nods. His hair flops up and down, still in the stages of childhood. He reminds her _so much_ of Takeshi, even with the monumental differences in their lives.

(…She might have been afraid to change things, once.

Not now.

Not with eight-year-old bullied and shunned Sawada-kun before her, with daily worries that include being _humiliated_ by disapproving adults and classmates alike.)

Keiko smiles at him, and makes her words as sincere as she possibly can. It's not as hard as she thinks it should have been. "Why don't you come over to our place for today, then? You and Takeshi-kun can play together, or something."

Sawada-kun's smile is hesitant, but radiant in its own way.

**XXXIII.**

Takeshi pushes open the doors to Takesushi, grins at the small bell chiming from its place hung on the door, and yells out a greeting into the shop proper. The wave from his tou-chan and quick glance from his nee-chan are expected.

The boy that said nee-chan is bent over books with is not.

Takeshi blinks at the sight a couple of times, his bag of sports equipment swinging over his shoulder, while the brown-haired boy – _it's the same boy,_ he realizes with a jolt, the one that he's been keeping a side-eye on – startles and hurriedly stands up. _"Hieeeee!"_

He might have moved too quickly, though, because he falls down, tripping onto the hardwood floor.

"Whoa! Are you alright?" Takeshi yells, and drops his bag where he stands to hurry over to the boy – Sawada, isn't it? Just because he hasn't been able to _talk_ to the boy himself yet doesn't mean that he's _deaf._ He can hear Onoda-sensei yelling just fine. – "That looked like it hurt!"

The other boy groans from where he lies, and only gets up when Takeshi and his nee-chan drag him upright and into a chair. "S -sorry," he whispers quickly, eyes lowered.

Takeshi doesn't like the sight. "Maa, maa. _I'm_ sorry for startling you," he says, even if he's not exactly sure why _this boy_ is here in Takesushi.

And, as always, his Keiko-nee proves that she's _good at this game _– it doesn't matter how much she denies it, and if he doesn't know better he'd say that she's cheating – and answers his unspoken question.

"I was helping Sawada-kun with his homework while we were waiting for you." His nee-chan's eyes move towards the table stacked with papers, and then with a pointed look at Takeshi's own bag – "Why don't you join us, otouto?"

He groans good-naturedly, and shoots Sawada a sheepish grin when Keiko-nee isn't looking. Sawada smiles back, with none of the usual shyness or clumsiness or, and he hates to use the word but it fits, _dame-ness_ that is so common at school.

Until he trips over his chair trying to stand up to get water, but Takeshi doesn't exactly care about Sawada's mishaps by then; not that he ever has, anyway, and he likes to think that the other boy is grateful for that.

All in all, it takes them an hour or so for his Keiko-nee to explain the math concepts to the both of them, as well as look over their _kanji_ worksheets, though it should have taken less time than it had. Takeshi doesn't exactly mind the extra time, either – he's been meaning to speak with Sawada, anyway, and he doesn't blame his classmate for needing extra explanations.

(He's never quite agreed with the other senseis at school, but had always thought that they knew how to best teach. He regrets that choice, now, when Keiko-nee has to explain _order of operations_ in a way that makes sense to Sawada.)

Takeshi is there for Sawada's hesitant replies and noticeably blank spaces where someone else might have included his nee-chan's name, though, or finishing his sentences with "Yamamoto-san" and nervous movements with his fingers.

This is quite abrupt, but.

…

…But.

He can't make decisions for his nee-chan, but he _can_ start reaching out to Sawada, as he's always intended.

(And maybe he'll be able to find out why he has _those eyes_ of his, the ones that _understand_ Takeshi's predicament among Namimori.)

**XXXIV.**

Hibari Kyouya is not a patient person in any sense of the word – not when there is a fight to be had that dances just out of his grip, elusive and sly.

It makes no sense to him – why would an herbivore that has _grown fangs_ hide said fangs from the world? Given, it is not as if Yamamoto Keiko is _actively _hiding her strength; not anymore. Not since the beginning of their chases across town, metal tonfa against wooden blade.

Still, why would she _run?_ He _knows_ her skill, her own right as a _carnivore_.

(It is not as if she is the first that has shown such capacity – his _Disciplinary Committee_ is a show of that fact – but Yamamoto Keiko _is_ the first to stand her ground, then retreat.

_An enigma. Why, why, why, why, why?_)

In his patrols around the town, he does not see the other much. Legally, she is in Secondary and he should still be in Primary; but when has _Hibari Kyouya _ever listened to the _herbivores' _rules?

Yet, even with that fact, it is as if she does not venture out into Namimori, other than attending school and returning home.

He has debated visiting Takesushi and challenging her, but declines the thought in the end.

(Over time, the chases have become… almost _amusing._ Like playing with a predator that can _fight back,_ yet chooses not to. It is a rush that is, in some ways, better than his other fights.)

But.

The prospect of a _true_ battle – one without running, nor cunning maneuvering, nor _any _of the various tricks that Yamamoto Keiko uses to escape the fight – brings a sharp smile to his lips and a thrumming through his veins, a sharpness that falls over his mind.

It will only be a matter of time until he will get her to fight seriously – and then.

Then, Kyouya will be satisfied, and not a moment before.

**XXXV.**

It is, again, something that she should have expected – though this time, she has had a good cause not to _completely_ expect something. Even with a precedent.

The feeling that she is being _watched_ grows, and grows, and grows, until she is reacting to looks across the street and feels more at home in a crowd and with easy exit points than she ever has before.

It doesn't amount to anything – until it does.

After the _example_ that her father has made of people targeting his family, Keiko had really thought that they would know better than to try a direct attack.

People might live and learn, but the _mafia_ is insistent upon vendettas and revenge.

(Her only consolation is that these assassins are here for a different reason than the one that had… first attacked her family_._)

Still, it doesn't make her reactions any different – but this time, she has a weapon on-hand, no matter that it is made of mere wood.

_Spin, slash, raise the blade to block. Kata number four, commonly used for deflecting momentum._

It's almost funny, really, how many people think that little girls will be _weak._ Will not be _prepared._ And of those that do see through the deception that Tsuyoshi has hovered around his family, none of them are prepared for the exact _nature_ of the counterattack.

Keiko has grown, these past months with her tou-san and her spars with Hibari Kyouya. The day until her true mastery over her sword style is not far.

Thankfully enough, however, this time the assassin chooses a time that Takeshi and Sawada-kun are at the park, the former attempting to teach the latter more about baseball.

This time, her father is home with her.

_Bad timing, or bad reconnaissance. Either way, it works out._

It goes… better, this time, and they manage to keep the damage to the shop to a minimum.

It wouldn't do to frighten away Sawada-kun now that her brother's actively making an attempt to get to know the other boy.

(It makes her entire _life_ easier, knowing that Takeshi might not have to risk himself on a plunge to the earth from an entire building up, wrought with despair, to get Sawada-kun to _notice _him and to give him the option of a life that she _knows_ he will value above all, in the end.)

**XXXVI.**

It's more difficult than he'd first thought, teaching Sawada – no,_ Tsuna-kun,_ because the brunette's face lights up with a smile when he does as if no one's ever used it the way Takeshi's used it before – teaching _Tsuna-kun_ how to play baseball. But Yamamoto Takeshi is not a _quitter._

(Both his tou-chan and his nee-chan will _kill_ him if he ever turns into one.)

It takes more than a slight bit of maneuvering to get Tsuna-kun into the correct position for batting, and then to not get him to tremble whenever Takeshi pitches the ball as gently as he can, even though he's always been more of a batter than a pitcher.

But he likes to think it's worth it in the end, because –

Because it _is._

Just the happy grin and the triumphant look that he shoots Takeshi would be worth it by themselves, but when Tsuna-kun gets over his stutter and nervousness and gives him a hug?

_Priceless._

(He doesn't know why he's been pushing off talking to Tsuna-kun before, but he knows he's not going to stop.

It's… somewhat like having an actual _friend,_ outside of baseball. It's… a _good_ sort of feeling.)

**XXXVII.**

After that, it's easy to talk to Tsuna-kun in school, easy to walk home with him. The other boy doesn't have grand expectations for him, only watches with those brown eyes and smiles and is honest and sincere to the point where Takeshi wonders why, exactly, it is that the other children and the senseis target him.

(People can be cruel; Takeshi knows this. It's part of the reason why everything's a game to him, in the end.

_If you're playing a game, there are rules, and those who break the rules, he can deal with._

Even without tou-chan or nee-chan – he doesn't want to worry them, after all.)

Following the… _first incident,_ Takeshi takes to either inviting Tsuna-kun over to his father's shop every day after baseball practice, or walks his friend – and what a joy it is to say that, without anything _else_ behind it, not _teammate _or _classmate_ or anything else, just _friend_ – home.

(Takeshi might be young, might only be _just_ getting into the upper years of Primary, but he is not _stupid._ He isn't _deaf,_ or _blind._ Like the whispers that the other parents had had about him and his nee-chan and his tou-chan, those early years, he notices it when people start talking about him and Tsuna-kun.)

But still, life is always a game in the end, isn't it? Fresh-cut grass and blue sky and white clouds overhead, the rush of _victory_ when he hits a home run.

He's always had his tou-chan and his nee-chan beside him for those. And now –

With the sky turning darker and sunset getting earlier and leaves falling to the ground –

He likes to think that he'll have Tsuna-kun, too.

**XXXVIII.**

Yamamoto Takeshi is _nothing_ like Tsuna had ever imagined.

When he'd first heard the whispers where adults had thought he couldn't listen, he hadn't believed it. Namimori is a town known for its peace, strictly kept by the Hibari family, and later, by Hibari Kyouya himself – a family with only the one parent and no other relatives is rare.

Rare enough that he'd thought that he and his kaa-chan had been the only ones, first.

But they _aren't,_ and Tsuna is still on the fact that moreover, Yamamoto Takeshi, _the_ baseball star, is on speaking terms with _Dame-Tsuna._

On _friendly_ terms with him, and –

It's embarrassing, to have to have this spelled out to him, but then again, Tsuna's been humiliating himself for a while now. With stumbles over mere air, with accidents down the stairs, with the utter _disaster_ that he is in the classroom.

Surely, one more humiliation to ask if he and Yamamoto Takeshi are friends is nothing more.

(That's what he tells himself, hands wringing themselves as he waits for the other boy to finish with baseball practice.

_Maa, maa,_ is all Takeshi-kun tells him when he asks, though. _Of course I am. Don't worry, Tsuna –_ and it's the first time that Takeshi-kun has dropped the suffix, though unknown to him, it won't be the last, not by a long shot – _because, I mean, _someone_ has to make sure that you hone your baseball skills properly, right?_)

And it's sort of pathetic, really, that he needs _that _sort of reassurance, but he smiles at Takeshi-kun and heads home with a warm body by his side in the fall's slowly-creeping cold, no bullies in sight.

**XXXIX.**

Her lights are off, but her walls are lit from lights outside, casting shadows and darkening parts of her room.

It had taken Takeshi and Sawada-kun spending more time together than she'd suspected to remind her of the fact, but –

_Gokudera Hayato. Vongola Tenth's Right Hand, and Storm Guardian._

By bringing her brother and Sawada Tsunayoshi together at an early age as childhood friends, she might as well have _ruined_ the Italian's chance at having a close relationship with Sawada-kun, even moreso than a welcoming Famiglia.

(But – and this is the catalyst that Keiko finds that, in hindsight, she hates about herself but does not have the heart to fix – she _does not care._

_Not when the other option is to have left things the way they had been going, and the consequences afterwards._)

To her, at the moment, Gokudera Hayato is merely a name. There is not a person that she has connected to with the string of characters, the given name and surnames.

(It is the same with Reborn, because at this rate, where _she_ is the one who has somehow ended up helping Sawada-kun with his homework along with her own otouto, she will make his entire job _pointless_.

But right here, right now, she does not _care _– not when eight, soon-to-be nine-year-old Sawada Tsunayoshi sits at one of the corner tables in her father's shop and struggles through his _kanji_ every day, even with her guidance and Takeshi's ever-reliable encouragement.)

She doesn't quite know what this says about her, but on one of winter's first nights where the temperature drops even in her second-floor bedroom, ruthlessness on behalf of her brother is something that… she can make _peace _with, in a sense.

**XL.**

Of course, it's _then_ that Takeshi decides to reveal to them that he's brought an Akita Inu home – a happy, sandy-colored thing, tail wagging and tongue lolling like it's the most natural thing in the world.

"His name," Takeshi says proudly, "is Jirou."

…

_…Jirou, the Box Weapon, ten, fifteen years into the future. Or perhaps the Box Weapon had been named after Jirou, the dog. _

The odd thing, though, is that it is _Takeshi_ who had brought the dog home, but it had been _Sawada-kun_ that had taken the role of convincing her and tou-san to let it stay. With wide eyes and his constant stutter, quietly terrified of the dog, but – he'd stood up for it.

And that, in and of itself, tells Keiko that things have _already_ started changing, five, six months into the two boys' first meeting.

(Perhaps she should have known that, when she had introduced her brother and the brunette early, and they had hit it off like good friends – best friends, even, maybe, and she is _glad _for that – ever since.

Because Keiko _knows_ what Sawada-kun's home life is like, alone without a father and with a mother that, supposedly, cooks like a dream and yet does nothing. Only some of the facts are from the story in her head – the rest are from gossip among Namimori, intertwined with the people that insist _Nana-san is a perfectly wonderful woman,_ and those that say _her child is a menace and a danger to himself._

She has yet to meet the woman, and already, she is dreading the encounter.)

Though, the actual _persuading_ doesn't take too much – Jirou, whenever their father tries to chase him out, always ends up trotting through Takesushi's doors on her otouto's heels.

It helps that Jirou, for all of his devotion to her Takeshi-kun, adores both her father and her, in the end.

(It helps that, when she really needs one, Jirou becomes a _warning system_ for her brother, for Sawada-kun, and for any… _strangers,_ in the house, in the end.)

* * *

><p>A bit longer than what I've been writing. Let me know what you think.<p>

Questions, again, for those who have so kindly replied last time (and perhaps for those who will comment this time):

1. Are there any specific point-of-views that you would like to see?

2. Did anything in this set particularly surprise you?

Safe travels,

- dktsubani


	5. XLI - L

**XLI.**

Teaching is a hazardous job – both for the mental health and the physical, when one affects the other and stress threatens to take over one's life. It's a job in which the educators are underappreciated, misunderstood, and often blamed when things go wrong.

That is not the case with one Sawada Tsunayoshi. The _boy_ is the one who is blamed, is infamous for his horrid reputation in academics, as well as his clumsiness and unbelievable lack of hand-eye coordination. Onoda Hatsue hadn't wished to believe the rumors at first, because could one _really_ be that bad at _everything_ at his age?

She'd understood, though, after that first week of school. Her mint-green cashmere sweater will never be the same again, no matter how many times she sends it to the cleaner's.

Still, Hatsue has tried the best that she could; she has given Sawada-kun chances, has hand-waved those first few grades and ridiculous excuses aside.

But she is only human – as much as she is a teacher, as much as patience is _valued_ in one in her position, after half a year of having Sawada Tsunayoshi in her class she finds her patience close to nil, at this point.

She knows that she has an ill temper. It is a problem that has resurfaced again, and again, and again. It means that she is one of the teachers that students are wary of; it means that when she gives up on a student, she does not regret, nor look back.

It makes it _that_ much more surprising when the brown-haired boy starts to bring in better-completed work, slowly, as if knowledge has started to trickle into his head at a snail's pace. It's not something that she has expected, not this far into the school year, but it's the fact that this change has started to happen after the winter break that has caught her attention.

There are only a few explanations for the change, as subtle as it is; and she doesn't think that Sawada-kun has suddenly been able to get smarter, nor enhance his ability to learn in such a short period of time, either. So there is only one explanation, and she asks Sawada-kun to stay right as the bell dismisses the rest of the students for lunch.

The children filing out snicker and murmur among themselves, with scattered laughter here and there, but only one waits without a care of being left behind. "This won't take long," Hatsue calls out, and Yamamoto Takeshi tosses her a sheepish grin and ceases to hover by her door.

Sawada Tsunayoshi had jerked his head, clearly surprised, when she had spoken not to her but to the Yamamoto boy instead, and there is a shock in his eyes, then… something more _unreadable,_ before Hatsue brings his attention back to her. She takes note of the changes, but doesn't comment.

She hasn't called him here for that, after all.

A quick shuffle of papers, and then – she pulls it out, pinched between two fingers, and carefully lays it before Sawada-kun. It's still something she's not quite sure of, and handles it appropriately. "You've improved," Hatsue says, and watches for a reaction. She's rewarded with a dumbfounded expression, then rapid glances from the basic quiz from the day before to her own face.

The score on that test is marginally higher than what Sawada-kun usually gets – a good four points higher, at the very least. And this has been a pattern for the last two weeks, so far.

"I don't know how you're doing it, Sawada-kun," she says when the boy before her doesn't do anything else other than stare at the paper. Hatsue hasn't passed anything back yet, has been hoping for a trend to present itself, so she knows that it's his first time seeing himself get a grade better than a failing one. She lets him savor the moment before she continues. "But please, keep it up. You might actually pass the class at this rate."

She hadn't expected Sawada Tsunayoshi to get anything other than a failing grade in her class. She hadn't expected him to give her a look any other than the pitiful one that he gives when she asks exactly _why_ he doesn't have his homework.

So the beaming smile that Sawada-kun gives her comes completely out of nowhere and surprises her.

(One day, she will look back on this and _wonder._)

**XLII.**

It's a rare sort of day, when she walks Sawada-kun home, shortening her strides to let both her brother and his friend keep up. She doesn't do this often – and to be honest, she hasn't even stayed long enough to meet Sawada Nana, always waving him off at the front door to his instead.

But Sawada-kun is happy, joyous, even, and completely ecstatic to be able to show his mother an improvement in his grades, even if he does act a little nervous to be introducing his impromptu tutor at the same time.

Keiko… doesn't know, exactly, what to expect. The entirety of the story in her head, as well as what she can piece together from the self-contradictory town gossip, all point to Sawada Nana being a less-than-ideal mother.

However, she is not one to judge someone before she has truly met them.

(Isn't that what had happened to Sawada-kun, after all, as well as herself and her otouto, when people refuse to _ask_ and only _assume_?)

"Ah, welcome, welcome! Please, come in! I didn't expect to see the one who's helping my son!"

…

…

…Sawada Nana is a different matter altogether.

Keiko pastes a false smile over her face and tilts her chin up, pushes her shoulders back, to meet that completely oblivious grin and the _wrongwrongwrong_ mannerisms of the woman. "It's no trouble at all," she says, and watches Sawada-kun and her brother quickly toe off their shoes and hurry up the stairs.

She is led into the sitting room, sat down at the table, alone with a cup of tea as Sawada Nana busies herself in the kitchen to prepare light refreshments.

The only pictures on the walls are over half a decade old, from when Tsunayoshi-kun had been a young child, younger than he is now, and when his father had actually been _home._

She knows who Sawada Iemitsu is – _head of a part of the mafia,_ the story in her head goes, while the rest of the world insists _a simple construction worker supporting his family_ – and tries not to frown.

(The entire house feels _wrong_ to her, feels _false,_ somehow, even when it is a Sky's refuge.)

"There you go!" Sawada Nana says, placing down a tray of an assortment of cookies, laid out in a spiral that's pleasing to the eye as she sits down herself opposite of Keiko. "I really do have to thank you for helping my son, Yamamoto-san. He's told me quite a bit about you."

"Ah, really?" Keiko paints a chagrined tilt onto her lips, and tries to calm her fingers' twitching for the sword case she'd placed with her shoes, near the front door and out of reach. "Only good things, I hope."

"Only good things," the mother confirms, gripping at her own tea and pausing to take a sip. Her teeth are a brilliant white, moreso than what she'd have thought. "And you've really helped my Tsuna-kun so much! He's no longer that useless son that he was."

And.

There it is.

Sawada Nana does not even _flinch_ as she says those words – "_useless son."_

(As if she's _resigned herself_ to her son being a disaster forever, as if she's signed him off as a failure _already._ Without even _trying_ beyond flimsy attempts at a tutor, or in this case, harsh discouragement.

_There is a reason Keiko resents automatic assumptions, though they are, in this case, correct._)

_Kami-sama,_ she hadn't expected Sawada Nana to be this bad.

(Somewhere, she might have even hoped that all of the warning bells in her head and the harsh words spoken by the older generation might have been false, might have been unfounded.

Right now, even though she can sense that there is… _something else_ buried beneath the Sawada woman's completely oblivious way of dragging down her son, Keiko has to resist the urge to walk out the door with Sawada-kun in tow.)

"He's improved," she says instead, neutrally, diplomatically. Her words come out flatly, and a distant part of her wonders at just _how_ she is keeping herself civil. Sawada Nana doesn't even _notice._ "I apologize, but I need to get back to the shop – today's a weekday and my tou-san needs help. Do you mind Takeshi-kun staying over before coming home?"

"Of course not, he's welcome to!" The older woman waves off her words with a smile. She's hasn't stopped beaming this entire time, and _oh_, is that why she feels uneasy, other than the sheer _audacity _of her behavior towards her own son?

Keiko leaves with her hand reaching for a weapon she does not have the right to use (not for this, as much as she wishes to) and her brother a vanguard for a lost little boy, or what amounts to one, anyway.

(Still, though, she wouldn't change it for anything – not here, not now, not with _Sawada Nana_ in the picture, a slow poison that no one else will ever see coming.)

**XLIII.**

Baseball might be slow-going, but it is a tradition that he and Tsuna-kun have kept up for a while, now.

Well. "Tradition" might be overdoing it, but in Takeshi's mind, they've been doing this for months, so it counts as a tradition, right?

(It counts as something _friends_ do, right?)

So.

As it stands: baseball is a _tradition._

_Tradition that has no right to be broken, to be _interrupted,_ by someone who doesn't _understand.

"I bet you cheated," Kikkawa jeers, and Tsuna-kun hides behind Takeshi, who finds he doesn't mind. He's too angry at the other Primary boy and his _bully-friends_ to do so.

(See, the funny thing is Takeshi doesn't get angry easily. He might get annoyed and irritated, sure. He just hides those with a smile and a laugh and pretends not to see, because it's just _easier_ to _pretend_, sometimes.

But when he _does_ get actually angry –

He's learned a lot of things from his nee-chan. One of those things is how to turn that anger into something cold, something _arctic, _something that even he'd been afraid of, once, before he'd turned it into his own.)

"Got any proof?" he asks right back, mouth curling up into a smile because he _knows_ Kikkawa can't prove it. The other boy had lost even before he'd stepped up to the plate.

Yamamoto Takeshi doesn't get angry easily, and everyone knows it for a fact. They're too used to seeing him smile to think any differently.

But he is his tou-chan's son, and his nee-chan's brother.

His question doesn't throw Kikkawa off, unfortunately; the other boy's got something to prove, after all, and he can't back down so easily. Not in front of his friends.

(Images to keep, and maybe somewhere in the future he'd have had the same mindset. It's out of the ballpark, now, not even a possibility anymore.)

Kikkawa's smile is ugly, and there's something not quite like the classmate that Takeshi's known the entirety of Primary in it. "We don't need one – _everyone _ knows that Dame-Tsuna couldn't pull of something like _that._ Onoda's just going too soft on him, is all, don't want to break poor, fragile _Tsuna-kun's feelings,_ do we? Of course he cheated. Let us through, Yamamoto."

The baseball bat is light in Takeshi's hands, and he can feel his shoulders settling, feels the rest of his body rest into that funny state that it gets into right when a major baseball game is about to start and he's at the plate, bat on his shoulder and his cap blocking the sun, the crowd roaring in his ears –

No. There isn't the scent of freshly-cut grass here, only wet ones from the night before and dirt-now-mud. This isn't the baseball field, this is _Namimori,_ and he has Tsuna-kun at his back, Kikkawa and his _bullies_ in front of him, and a baseball bat in his hands, and he isn't afraid to use it – not for Tsuna.

Never for Tsuna.

"No proof, then. Is this a game? Because then I'll win!"

(This is a game because then Takeshi has to win, _or else._)

(Nee-chan just sighs at him, afterwards, and he gives her a sheepish laugh but Tsuna-kun comes out of the whole thing without a bruise, just mud splatter, and _that_ is what Takeshi takes pride in and _that_ is what makes the last two hours a win.

_Though somehow, you're not suspended for it, and isn't that a funny thing?_ is all she has to say, a day later. There's a smile, somewhere, like the one that she'd given Jirou when she'd taught him how to attack targets. It's not a very nice smile.

Takeshi has the best nee-chan in the _world._)

**XLIV.**

"You've come a long way, Keiko," her father starts. The two of them are sitting _seiza_ in the dojo, dressed in sparring gear. He is not a man who gives compliments lightly, and she lets pride fill her chest, just a bit.

Yamamoto Tsuyoshi continues to speak, hands on his knees and seemingly at ease with the topic. "I'll be honest with you – when you had first thought to learn this style, I was quite surprised. And worried. I don't have a reason to be, I know that now, but in the beginning you would have probably given this old man's heart fewer heart attacks had you gone with the _Shigure Soen Ryu._"

She refuses to feel guilt at that, and tou-san chuckles to himself, just a bit, at her knowing glare. Because he'd _known_ her reasons when she'd first explained her choice, or at the very least enough of it for him to believe her, and both of them know that. Her father is just as bad as Takeshi at attempting to guilt-trip, sometimes.

"But now, we're almost nearing the end of your training." He grins at her confusion, and she imagines that at least some of her nerves are showing on her face. "And, though this isn't included in the _Shigure Soen Ryu _or any of the other styles I've shown you, it is one of the reasons that few people choose to learn what _you _chose in the first place."

Her father, her stalwart guide in kenjutsu for the last year and to whom she owes her sword skills to, reveals the object that he's been hiding – a blindfold.

"…really, tou-san? _Really?_"

This time he outright laughs. "It's not my fault that you chose something that requires more bruises than normal!"

(_It's not my fault you wanted such a _challenge.)

…

…

…if this is a _challenge,_ then so be it.

Keiko takes the blindfold from her father, puts it on, and resigns herself to an aching body in the morning.

**XLV.**

Satomi might have her reservations, but Eri isn't a fool. A single child she might be, but she _knows_ more than she lets on.

(That is her role in their little group, isn't it? Satomi hides where none can find and Keiko hides in plain sight but Eri is the one that _sees_.)

They hadn't been the only ones who'd noticed Keiko's sudden fondness of a sparring sword, of her newfound habits of bringing it to school and back, even though she doesn't use for the entire duration of class. The kendo team is thoroughly confused, and Eri knows that they're at least not _insulted_ when Keiko turns down their invitations to join, and thankful for it.

Midori is a highly competitive school, and sometimes people just don't have the _time._

But still.

Satomi thinks that the shinai is Keiko's security blanket, something to help keep her _safe_ within Midori's grounds, and Eri isn't dismissing that theory. Far be it from her, because that is a highly probable reason and something that worries her, too.

But after she hears about Sawada Tsunayoshi and Yamamoto Takeshi and Keiko's involvement in both of the two boys' lives, she has to admit that the picture that these puzzle pieces are making is something entirely different.

Takei Eri is an only child, so she will never fully know Keiko's protective streak, just as she will never fully know Satomi's annoyance at older siblings. But that allows her an unbiased stance on things, without pre-existing thoughts to trip her up, just as she prefers.

And from what she can see, Keiko brings her blade to school not because it is the _school_ that she fears, but something _outside_ of it.

(Because as stubborn as her friend is, Eri knows that if it truly had been something within the school itself that had frightened their sword-wielding friend, truly nothing would have stopped her from carrying it from class to class, somehow.

And Keiko _hadn't_ – she'd only left it in her locker, to pick it up again on the way out of school. She carries the sword _while outside._

Not inside. Only outside.)

Eri doesn't have enough evidence, not yet, and she will _not_ be presenting a theory with only half of the supporting facts, thank you very much. But it's a start.

(It's a start to unraveling more about her friend, like she does with Satomi, sometimes, like she does with the other girls at Midori, and Eri is content to let Keiko lead and follow the thread where it goes.)

**XLVI.**

Some things just don't change in Namimori. That's what Sasagawa Kyoko has been taught to believe, with the town's predictable weather and predictable events and _predictable people._

That's what she's_ always_ believed in, along with her brother with his crazy love of boxing and the old certainty that _yes, Hana, I know about the boys and I can't do anything about it, sorry._

So it makes it all that more surprising when Sawada Tsunayoshi, one of the boys in her year, starts being _more_ than just the Dame-Tsuna that she's – that _everyone's,_ really, if she thinks about it – believed he'd be.

Though, to be honest, it had started when Yamamoto Takeshi (one of the few boys that hadn't started flocking to her for… whatever reason, which Kyoko thinks she will be forever glad about) had befriended the brown-haired boy.

Hana might laugh at her for concerning herself with boys' problems, but Kyoko knows that there is something new, on the verge. It's the same feeling that she'd gotten right before onii-chan had started boxing, the same feeling that she gets when someone precious to her need something, right before they mention it. _Woman's intuition,_ her mother had called it.

It is a feeling of _change._

Whatever it is, it hasn't led her astray before. Kyoko isn't about to start believing it will now – no matter how odd it is.

_Faith is a belief in the unbelievable._

**XLVII.**

It takes a reminder from tou-chan, and a conversation when Keiko-nee is outside the house studying with her friends, before he truly _understands._

And he's proud of his sister, of course he is, but Takeshi thinks that he can be excused a little bit of disbelief.

Because Keiko-nee is almost _finished_ with her mastery of her swords style, and isn't that a _really cool thing?_

Takeshi remembers the early days quite well, when their father had warned Keiko-nee against choosing that one specific style, when she had asked him about taking the _Shigure Soen Ryu _for her own. He'd never quite understood why she'd turned down the offer, when his sister is the elder and has a prior right to the style.

But he _does _know that turning down something like that takes guts, and it's one of the reasons that his nee-chan is _the best._

This… isn't a traditional thing, Takeshi knows. And he doesn't think that his sister will need it anyway – or at least, he _hopes_ she won't. But Takeshi isn't a little brother for nothing, and although nee-chan won't accept protection directly, this, at least, is something that she will indulge him with.

It had meant to be a private thing, at first. But when Tsuna-kun finds out what he's doing, the other boy had wanted to help, too.

After much thought (and a talk with his tou-chan about what having _real_ friends means, which Takeshi comes out of chagrinned), he decides Tsuna-kun helping can't hurt.

Because the more people involved in this who want to see his sister safe, the better, right?

**XLVIII.**

To be honest, she'd thought that this would have taken a longer time than it had. Keiko knows better than to underestimate Hibari Kyouya now, though. To his credit, he hadn't even taken half a year before she'd been forced to take his ambush-spars seriously.

She still hasn't been able to get him to drink that tea with her, though. It's a goal for strive for, she supposes.

Keiko lets herself sigh, this once, when she turns the street corner to find Hibari standing in her way, hands loosely holding his signature tonfa. She'd almost made it home, too – they're a scant few streets away from Takesushi.

"Again already, Hibari-san?" she staunchly does _not_ complain, and draws her shinai from its sheath.

Her opponent doesn't respond other than a sharp revealing of teeth – the mark of a predator with a targeted prey – and leaping at her with tonfa in hand.

This time, it ends more favorably than a draw. A good thing too, since Keiko _knows_ she's close to finishing her mastery of her sword style and the entire thing would have been a waste of time if she can't beat Hibari even once in just a spar.

**XLIX.**

"C-congrat-tulations, Y-yamamoto-san!"

Keiko sighs as Sawada-kun shuffles his feet nervously, a hand finding its way to the back of his head to rub at his hair awkwardly. It's long since time for her to do this, and Takeshi is giving her a sideways look as if he _knows_ what she's going to do, but he can't because she's never told anyone this in the first place and this is an entirely spontaneous decision and why is she stalling anyway.

No time like the present to start something new. "Call me sempai, damnit. I can never tell if you're referring to tou-san or not if you keep saying 'Yamamoto-san.' And no. Not a _word_ from you, otouto."

She leaves Sawada-kun sputtering and turns to Takeshi, who hands her something first instead of talking. It takes a moment before she accepts it, startled as she is.

"I'm sorry I can't do much else," Takeshi starts when she turns the package over in her hands, just a little bit rushed, "because tou-chan is getting you a real sword and everything and nothing can top _that_. But I-I wanted something that would keep you safe, so this is what Tsuna-kun and I came up with."

Keiko swallows her questions and opens the small box.

…

…

It's a carved totem, wooden and small and threaded through with a cord long enough to hang around the neck. The mouth is parted slightly in a silent roar and the feet claw at empty air while the body coils itself into a spring, ready to attack.

It is, unmistakably, a rendition of a dragon – hand-carved wood or not.

"…did you make this?" As far as she can tell the time and effort that had been poured into it is staggering, evident in the detail of the robin's egg blue eyes – the only colored part of the totem – and the minuets of the scales and tail. "Because I'm wondering when you had the time – or did you skip out on studying when I wasn't looking?"

It's a valid accusation – her brother has shirked his books for less.

Said brother only laughs, slightly nervous as he shifts closer to Sawada – _kouhai, he's her kouhai now and something like purpose slides into place in her heart next to otouto and tou-san _– to her _kouhai_. He rubs the back of his neck.

"Maa, maa, nee-chan. It's not_ my_ fault that school hands out so much busywork! You said it yourself!"

He _has, _then, but she can't find it within herself to admonish him for it other than a glare.

Keiko huffs, but Takeshi's still smiling, the _gaki_, when she puts the necklace on and leaves it to hang over her shirt. It's a knowing sort of smile, and –

If she didn't know better, she'd have thought that Tsunayoshi had used a rudimentary version of the Hyper Intuition, because he's smiling Takeshi's smile, too.

**L.**

Four years later, Yamamoto Keiko is in Upper Secondary, seventeen-years-old and capable. She aids her father at the shop when she has time, tutors both her otouto and her kouhai every Friday, and continues to practice the_ Tengoku no Ryuu,_ waiting, uselessly, for the day that she doesn't have to.

Four years later, Yamamoto Takeshi and Sawada Tsunayoshi are steadfast friends, even though Takeshi's baseball and Tsunayoshi's continuous lack of significant sports abilities cause others to wonder just how, exactly, they have remained so.

Four years later, long after her life has settled into a shape that she can see stretching out into the future, clear and bright, _there's no guarantee that her world will be anything like the one in her head –_

A baby in an orange-stripped fedora hat visits Namimori.

.

* * *

><p>.<p>

..

And here we are - on the verge of canon. Let me know what you think.

The _Tengoku no __Ryuu _(天国 の竜) is a completely fictional sword-style, created by my own mind. I'll be touching on that more later into the story.

Traditionally, for protection people give _omamori, _or Japanese amulets, which have prayers written on them. Takeshi wanted to think outside of the box, and Tsuna just sort of... followed along.

In the beginning, **S****eiryū** was intended to be a drabble series. However, now that we're at this crossroads, I do believe the chapters will cease to be in a "drabble" format and be more of one fluid chapter. That isn't to say that we won't be changing point-of-views mid-chapter. It just means that the _scenes _depicted will get longer.

Accordingly, _I - L_ has come to an end. With the new year I'll have a new numbering format for **S****eiryū.**

Happy Holidays, and thank you for sticking around so far.

Safe travels,

- dktsubani


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